Old Maid Card Game for Kids
Old Maid card game is a good game to start children with playing card games. Kids will enjoy this easy to learn and fun to play game.
Number of Players: 3 or more
Age Range: 5 years and older
Materials: one standard deck of cards
How to Play:
- Remove one of the queens from the deck of cards. This leaves a pair of queens in the same color and one single queen (the old maid).
- Shuffle the cards and deal them one by one face down, till there are no cards left. It doesn’t matter if some players have one card more than others.
- The players pick up their cards and sort them by number or picture, while keeping them hidden from the other players! If they find a pair (for example two sevens or two jacks), he puts the pair down face up in front of him. If the player has three matching cards, he only can put down two cards and keeps one in his hand. So you always put down pairs of cards (two matching cards).
- Once all the players have sorted out their matches, the players make fans from the cards, while keeping them hidden from the rest. The person left of the dealer offers his hand to the player on his left. This player cannot see the cards offered and takes one random from the fan.
- He then looks if he can make a match with this new card. If he can, he puts the new pair of cards face up on the table, if not, he keeps the card in his hand. Then he, in turn, makes a fan of his cards and lets his neighbor to the left choose a card from his hand. The cards should be hidden at all times for the players when they choose a card from the fan.
- The Old Maid card game continues like this, till all the matches are made and there is only one card left. The Old Maid; the only queen who couldn’t find a match. The player holding this card is the loser of Old Maid.